Making the world cuter one painting at a time...and then blogging all about it!

November 27, 2007

However, today, pretty engrossed in a commissioned portrait, I totally forgot.

And when I realized I forgot, around suppertime, my first reaction was, "DANG, I forgot to get the mail."

And then I opened the door, and was suddenly oh so very GLAD I forgot to get the mail.

Because, due to the mail-forgetting, I got to see the most beautiful sunset in the history of beautiful sunsets:

(These pictures haven't been doctored or photoshopped in any way...a disclaimer I feel the need to add, because, man, can you believe the beauty? It was simply the most magnificent display I have ever seen. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera died and I missed some shots...there was a lot of bright pink and red involved moments later. Wow.)

I may just "forget" to get the mail at lunchtime tomorrow, as well! For now, it's time to go dance with the stars...and change the batteries in my mouse.

November 18, 2007

I know, I know. You were probably just about ready to send out a search party, but never fear: I've not been kidnapped by aliens, or runaway with any circuses. I haven't abandoned my blog. Okay, I DID abandon my blog, but it was a temporary abandonment.

I've been putting it off, figuring that Adventure #100 was sort of a milestone, and worthy of a super special post...a post with confetti and cupcakes with pink frosting, balloons and fireworks, and maybe some kind of earth-shattering announcement.

Alas, I've none of that.

BUT, instead, I'll ease back into the blogging with a fairly low-key post about ANOTHER milestone:

It was one year ago today I sold my first original painting on Etsy.

The exact e-mail I sent to my friend Lisa:

AND man, that seems like a decade or two ago, but nope, only 365 days. That was only my fourth or fifth sale...and now I'm 12 sales shy away from 200. 200!

I'm excited to see what # the Adventure I post on November 18th, 2008 will be, what milestone I'll be nearing a year from now, and if, looking back then, I'll be amazed that only a year has passed, at all that happened in those 365 days. My one wish is that no matter how many sales I have, that each and every sale between now and then still makes me feel like I've won the lottery.

To the next 365 days, reaching milestones, and adventures. I'll be back to documenting them on a regular basis starting in the a.m. and you're invited!

Love,

KJ

P.S. If you've not checked out the shop in a while, there's bunches of new stuff and will be more coming everyday!

November 07, 2007

Here's the custom painting of the bee-girl I mentioned I was working on Saturday, all finished and ready to fly away to her new home:

Okay, so, I also mentioned on Saturday my inability to get my dreamy giraffe-y little hands on one of the DCWV Once Upon A Time Matt Stacks. WELL, my friends, I now have my hands on TWO of the DCWV Once Upon A Time Matt Stacks.

See, see, see:

If anyone ever tells you that there aren't giving, generous, bee-u-tiful people left in this world? You tell them KJ says they are WRONG.

The lovely, sweet, fantabulous Greta who commissioned me to paint the above "The Birds & The Bee" painting as a present to herself for her birthday, read my blog post last week about my wanting Once Upon A Time matt stacks and she went on a mission to all the craft stores in her area until she found them and she bought one of each for me!!!

Now, Greta (whose name I keep mistyping Great, which is as a typo, well, very fitting!) does not know me, live and in person. A friend of hers bought her a print of mine as a gift and she was so happy with it, she asked me to do the custom bee-lady for her. For the past couple of weeks, we've chatted via Conversations at Etsy and I'd love to have a chat with her face-to-face someday, but the point is: we have never even met. And she did that for me. And that means so so so very much.

I believe I said in that other post, that one of the best things about doing art for a living is the supplies? WELL...even topping that, is the awesome and amazing and supportive people I get to meet along the way.

Now I must go do the happy dance!

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz,

KJ

P.S. Greta, thank you so very very much. I really and truly cannot express how much this means to me. Let me know if it's okay and I'll add a link to your blog in this post.

November 06, 2007

Last week, at the post office, I was standing across the counter from my Friendly Postal Worker, while he was weighing one of my packages, when I noticed something amiss on one of my labels.

"Oh, no," I said. "Can I have that one back for a second?"

You might be thinking the same thing Friendly Postal Worker must've been thinking, as he handed it to me: That I'd misspelled the addressee's last name, or had the street number wrong, or only had four numbers in the zip code.

Um, no:

I'd just left out the comma between Dallas and Texas, so the address looked like:

When I told Friendly Postal Worker that that was the oopsie I wanted to fix, he said, "Ah, you want everything to be just right and proper, yes?"

And I said, "No, I want everything to be perfect."

Which is true, kind of, but ugh, but what a drag is that. Because is anything perfect? No. So that goal always leads to disappointment and letdown.

So, my fellow perfectionists, let's stop trying for perfect. Let's just wonderful and fabulous and sweet and understanding and friendly and funny and caring...and imperfectly good enough. Chances are, after all, no one expects you to be perfect but your very own self! So, let's be our best, which will never be perfect. Our best, which includes our flaws, because they are apart of who we are, and without our flaws, we aren't really being our best, because we aren't really being US.

Where is all this coming from?

Weeeeell, this morning, I was going through my art, getting a bunch of stuff ready to list (oh my gosh, the hoarding -- I had NO idea that I had like thirty something pieces finished or veryveryvery close to being finished -- why don't I listen to the advice I so often give other -- if people can't SEE your work, they can't BUY your work), and I picked up a painting that I've never listed the original of, but have had prints of available in le shoppe for a long, long, long, long time.

And imagine my inner perfectionist shrieking in horror, and possibly curling up into a teeny tiny ball of humiliation and shame, upon my realizing, that yes, the girl in this painting? Only has one set of eyelashes. And it kind of makes me laugh -- because I am normally so picky about each and every little detail -- but, um, yeah. No robots here, obviously.

And, yes, I really and truly listed her that way and all this time have never even noticed.

You can see the actual listing here -- I've not changed it yet, but tomorrow, after I give her that second set of lashes, I will. Actually, I may take the print down and list the original.

In other news, I had three really, really, really, really bad nights, totally sleepless nights, so I've sort of kind of fallen off the NaNoWriMo bandwagon. But I AM going to get back on tomorrow morning. Thank goodness, I was able to sleep last night. Actually, I slept most of yesterday-day, then last night. I don't want my blog to be known as The Drugged Adventures of KJ & The Dreamy Giraffe, but I think I have to say: I am so very, very, very grateful to the makers of Tylenol PM. I am just not a girl who can function without her zzzzzzzzzzzzzz's.

November 03, 2007

I've been keeping pretty busy lately with working on commissioned custom pieces (which I'm always thrilled to do...the more, the merrier...hint, hint ;)), but yesterday, I took a break from painting to go get supplies so I can do more painting. Oh, and so I could go to lunch with my friend, Summer, (Unofficially) The Nicest Person On The Face Of The Planet.

We hadn't been to lunch in a while, so we went to our favorite restaurant, Red Bone Alley, where we had a waiter so ridiculously attractive that my math skills flew out the window and I forgot how to do basic multiplication and I think I left him like a 40% tip. Girls, this is how the good-looking menfolk begin to affect you when you work at home and don't see many of them live and in person (so McDreamy & McSteamy do not count) on a regular basis, so just be aware. It was a lot of fun catching up. (For those interested in the details, I had the Mexican Pizza Dip.)

Then I hit Hobby Lobby. One truly awesome thing about being an artist is the supplies. Love, love, love supplies. Love, love, love anything made by Die Cuts With A View. Love, love, love that Hobby Lobby had all scrapbooking papers 50% off this week so I got 2 matt stacks for the price of one. (The Rock Star one & The All Dressed Up one.) It kills me that I can never find any of the Once Upon A Time line in stores. But, then again, it's probably a good thing -- because if I did find that one, I probably wouldn't be able to limit myself to the matt stacks.

Today, I'm back to work, spending the weekend on more commissions that I'm really psyched about and ready to get going!

Here are some shots of the ones I've just finished up:

An idea sketch of a dragon, which is more detailed than my usual idea sketches, but I'd never painted a dragon before, so I wanted to be sure to get it just right!:

And the finished piece:

The idea sketch for a little girl perched atop a car:

And the completed painting:

AND something really different for me, here's part of a more traditional portrait, which I was VERY intimidated by, but I'm kind of pleased with how it turned out. (I wrote more about this one here.)

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work I go (though, on days like today, when I'm working on something as fun as a blonde queen bee-girl, it feels kinda silly to call it "work" !)

November 01, 2007

As you may know, November is National Novel Writing Month. (If you didn't know that, you can read more about it here.)

I'm happy to report that my writing muscles, indeed, have not disappeared or atrophied. They may be a wee bit out of shape, but they're still there.

When I told (my friend) Sheila I'd do this thing, I said that I was planning to write my 1,667 words (that's the count you need to put out daily to meet the length goal of 50,000 for the month) first thing in the morning, because if I don't do it then, I'll find a bajillion other things that MUST BE DONE, and I'll put it off until I'm too tired to write. So. I didn't do it the very first thing, BUT. It's 7:19 a.m....and ta da:

1,670 words! I'm such an overachiever. ;)

Here's a l'il excerpt:

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It wasn’t a cow, but it was roughly the size of one.

“Zach…?” I whispered.

“Callie…?” he whispered back.

“Um…what is it?” I asked, barely audible. We both stood, still as statues, under the light of the moon, staring at the thing that was not a cow, but was roughly the size of one. It stared, unblinking, back at us.

“I…have...no... idea,” Zach said, following each word with a deep breath.

We were in the woods out behind where I lived, woods we’d been in so often before it’d be impossible to count or even estimate the number of times. We used to meet in the middle between my home and the house he grew up in. When we were little, we ran and played and were just kids…and then as we got older, we’d sit underneath the trees for hours and talk. And one day, when neither of us had anything to say, those woods were where we kissed for the first time.

And now, this night in August, a week before my 21st birthday, it was like we’d gone back in time a decade, and were playing make-believe, spinning out of our imaginations all sorts of fabulous new realities, creating worlds that only existed for us.

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I am most likely going to change Zach's name because I hate it spelled with a h, but it didn't seem fitting for the character spelled with a k. I'm thinking about Jonas.

The first sentence came from the eventful morning I had yesterday, which began with very painful-sounding moo-ing coming and the ferocious, crazed barking of what sounded like a pack of wild wolves coming from the pond just behind the woods across the street. (I live way out in the country, in case I've not mentioned that, but NOT near any farms or cow pastures). It was actually two of my dogs, five other dogs...and a deer that seems to have been hit by a car. I won't go into anymore detail than that, but, goodness, that was a horrifying sound, that moo-ing and barking. All I have to say, is I'm so glad my uncle was home, and rushed over to handle it. Because this giraffe is not equipped for that sort of mission.

Anyway, the cow-sized thing in my story is not a deer, or any creature that in actually in existence, but that's how I got my beginning.

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And because (at least for those of us in the United States), November means Thanksgiving, a turkey print:

I took this little turkey girl, who I did for an Illustration Friday prompt last year, and spruced her up a bit, and now she's in the shop!